Brad Stewart Dot Com

recently i received an email inviting me to participate in a survey as a (former) verizon customer.  having recently left verizon for at&t, i thought this would be a good chance to give them some feedback.  before i go further, i just want to say i was happy with verizon’s coverage but ended up leaving after i had problems taking my account out of a company name and putting it into my personal name.  the contract had been up for over a year but they told me i had to sign a new 2 year contract.  i didn’t want new phones, a new plan or anything, just to change the name.  after going round and round with them about how ridiculous this was i finally canceled the account altogether and moved to at&t and got an iphone.  i couldn’t be happier.

so, having said all that, after receiving this survey i thought it would be a good chance to give some feedback.  it ended up being a good outlet for my frustrations but it was long.  15 minutes long.  with no indicator for the length.  the only reason i stuck with it was because my frustrations with leaving verizon over shadowed my desire to go eat dinner.  the most frustrating thing of all however was after i was done with the beast there was nary any sort of indication they appreciated my feedback.  this to me sums up my experience perfectly with verizon, thanks for being a part of verizon but now that we got what we want(monthly contract payment, survey response), be gone!

This phrase has been bothering me for a while when it’s been used in discussions regarding our largest companies needing bail outs.  This article from Robert Creamer articulates better than I ever could many of the feelings I’ve been having.

To most Americans the answer is clear: if a financial institution is too big to fail, it’s just too big.

From Andrew Jackson to Williams Jennings Bryant to Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, the battle over size and power of banks and other financial institutions has been a theme that has run throughout American history. The reason is simple. The larger a financial institution becomes, the greater its power to control the lives and futures of ordinary Americans. Of course, that power is never demonstrated so graphically as in times of financial collapse, when the excesses of unregulated markets and supersized financial empires implode on the entire economy.

Read the rest: Huffington Post

Well, it’s been a few years since I’ve made any changes to this site and I feel like it’s time to move it forward.  After many adventures(and mis) in entrepreneurship, real estate, private equity, the internet and sport, I finally feel like I am headed in a direction I am happy with.  I don’t intend to write a lot here, but with all the turbulence in the world at large and my little corner of it, the urge to comment has finally over taken my desire to be quite and go about my day.

So, take a look around and stop back again.